


A Little Family Bonding

by dirkygoodness



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drunk Five, Emotional spiral, Five has a moment and thinks maybe nothing that's happened is real, Gen, Klaus helps him work through it on accident, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spiral - Freeform, have you figured out which two characters are my favorites yet, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 14:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17982986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirkygoodness/pseuds/dirkygoodness
Summary: Each and every one of them flaked on world-saving as soon as it was out of his mouth.So instead of getting up and being productive Five jumped down to the local liquor store and stole two bottles of whiskey for himself.If everyone else wasn’t going to give a shit, then maybe he’d give it a try too.





	A Little Family Bonding

**Author's Note:**

> i love my boys!

Getting drunk off his ass when he still had to save the world wasn’t the best idea Five’s ever had, but that wasn’t going to stop him. Sometimes (often) he just needed something to take the edge off - and when his only hope to stop the apocalypse was as irredeemably incompetent as his family was, it definitely qualified for some TLC.

Though, if he was trying to give himself _some_ credit, he only started drinking today after trying to tell his family yet again just, exactly, what was going on and each and every one of them flaked on world-saving as soon as it was out of his mouth.

So instead of getting up and being productive Five jumped down to the local liquor store and stole two bottles of whiskey for himself. He’s been nursing them for the entirety of the day, not having gotten out of his bed except to use the toilet. If everyone else wasn’t going to give a shit, then maybe he’d give it a try too.

Five lets his head loll to the side, glancing out his now-dark window. He’s on the final bottle of whiskey and is having just the _slightest_ bit of trouble keeping his thoughts in check. His mind keeps drifting to things he’d rather not think about, and no matter how _hard_ he tries he just can’t seem to keep them at bay.

Currently, his traitorous brain is trying to convince him that he doesn’t even deserve to save the world, after all the shit he’s done to it. Five can’t even remember the amount of people he’s killed, over the seemingly-endless expanse of years, and all the potential damage he’s cause by doing them.

Maybe the world was supposed to have something happen to it that’d _he’d_ stopped just trying to get back here and save the damn world. A world that, from what he could tell, didn’t want to be saved!

Ironic.

Five turns his head to Dolores, sighing heavily and tapping a finger against the neck of his whiskey bottle. He’s quiet for a moment, before he lets out the smallest of laughs and looks up towards the ceiling.

“Am I allowed to be happy?” Five asks Dolores, stirring the quiet of the seemingly otherwise empty room. “After everything I’ve done, am I allowed to be happy?” He lets his eyes slip closed as he takes another, long drink from the whiskey bottle he’d been nursing.

Dolores is quiet.

“Sure,” He hears, a voice that is most _definitely_ not Dolores filtering in from the doorway of his room. “Why not? It’s not like you’re hurting anyone by being happy.” Five snaps his head around and sees Klaus standing there, leaning up against the doorframe.

He looks like he’d just crawled out of bed, his hair a mess, his makeup smudged, sporting a pair of un-Klaus-like grey sweatpants that barely cling to his hips, sans shirt. He’s looking at Five with almost bored indifference.

“How long have you been standing there?” Five questions, only managing to drag the slightest bit of accusation to his voice, too tired to get truly angry. Klaus just shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Not long. Heard you talking.”

“Wasn’t talking to _you,”_ Five takes another hit from the bottle, the last, and tosses it at the farthest wall from him. It hits it with a clear _tink,_ falling to the floor and rolling a little ways. It doesn’t break. “It’s rude to eavesdrop.”

“I wasn’t.” Klaus says, his eyes trained on the empty bottle were it sits. “How much have you had to drink today?”

“Do _not_ start. You sound just like D-” Five stops himself at the last moment, a quiet nagging at the back of his head reminding him that _normal people_ don’t talk to mannequins. He swallows hard. “You’re the last person I want to be giving me a lecture about drinking.”

“Fair enough.” Klaus sucks in a breath and pulls up, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet like he’s trying to decide if he wants to leave or not. Unfortunately, he decides against it, moving into Five’s room like he was, somehow, allowed to.

The glare Five sends his way doesn’t seem to dissuade him, either, so he’s left to just lay there and watch as Klaus walks around his room. He keeps walking around for a moment, like he’s taking a tour of his room, before finally coming over to the end of the bed and dropping onto it with a groan, letting himself flop backwards until he’s laying across the foot of Five’s bed. Five huffs a breath and lets one of his knees fall flat against the bed so he can look at Klaus’ face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Five gives him a bewildered look, cocking a brow.

“You seemed like you needed company. Some quality bro time.” Klaus throws his hands up in the air as he says it, a weak smile spreading over his face before he lets his hands drop to the bed with a thump.

Klaus closes his eyes and just. Lays there. On _his_ bed. It’s. Annoying, is what it is. Yet he can’t seem to actually be _angry,_ for once. Five knows he should be, but he just can’t seem to muster the energy, so he settles for kicking Klaus in the shoulder as a sort of compromise with himself.

“I most certainly do _not._ ” He really doesn’t, but he also doesn’t feel like getting up to kick Klaus out of his room, and he knows better than to think anything short of physically throwing him out isn’t going to work.

So he just ends up sighing and dropping his head back, staring up at the ceiling above him. They lapse into silence, the only sound their breathing and the quiet, occasional noise of the wind.

Peaceful.

Calm.

_B_ _ut_.

Something about it is… it _hurts,_ in his chest, like he’s having trouble breathing. Five can't put a finger on what, exactly, about this that's making him feel this way. If it's the quiet, if it's Klaus’ being there. He can't tell. But it's like an itch is forming in the back of his mind, something like a passing thought or realization rising to the surface the longer the silence continues.

And it makes part of him wonder if Klaus is actually here, if his sleep and whisky addled mind isn’t somehow conjuring him. If the entire time he’s been back has just been one, long running hallucination to keep his breaking mind from fully losing itself. Maybe he hasn’t even been back this entire time, maybe he’s still just laying in the future drunk off his ass and dreaming about what might happen if he was back.

He kicks Klaus again.

“Ow,” Klaus says, voice high and not at all really hurt. Five can feel Klaus’ shoulder, real as the bed beneath him and it _should_ be comforting. But it’s not. Because if this _is_ a dream, then the bed beneath him is as fake as Klaus, so of course they’d feel the same. Five clenches his fist at his side and sucks in a breath.

There’s a knot, now, growing in his chest, and he tries to ignore it. Let’s his eyes roll to Dolores, sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. Tries to anchor himself on her as he gives her an imploring look. She stays silent. Why wasn’t she talking? Maybe she’s not real either. That particular thought is like a needle being jammed into his tear ducts, and he winces against the all-too-real sting of it.

Five lifts his arms and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees white spots, sucking in a sharp breath and shaking his head. _Get ahold of yourself. Of_ course _Dolores is real. She's been real this entire time!_

_…_

_Hasn't she?_

He knew the more he thought about this, the more he considered it the more he’d dig himself into this hole. The logical part of his brain knew that this was, unfortunately, real, and that they were all going to die soon if he didn’t find some way to stop it. But. That didn’t stop the _thought_ that maybe, just _maybe,_ it wasn’t.

That this was all in his head as he tried to escape from some new horror, or the long endless one of being alone in the future. Escapism at its finest. He probably passed out, drunk off his ass or - maybe this is the last few seconds he experiences before he dies. Five doesn't know.

It's possible. This does seem like an amalgamation of the future he knew and the family he remembers - aside from the others age and faces.

It's possible. It's easy to see it going down, giving himself alcohol poisoning and slipping between hallucinations. He's done it before.

It's possible.

He just about convinces himself that, yes, this isn’t real, that it’s all fake and nothing matters, when Klaus groans and smacks him in the leg. _That_ startles him, the pain stinging and real.

Hallucinations didn't hit him, the last time he remembers. It draws him back into himself, for a moment, and he pushes his hands up against his forehead, moving his hair out of his eyes as he stares down at Klaus.

“I could go for some food.” Klaus tells him, and it’s so utterly _Klaus_ that Five can’t fight the snort that rises, or the following laugh. Klaus’ eyes widen comically, his mouth hanging open for a moment before he rolls over onto his side, grabs Five’s ankle and shakes his leg.

“Oh my god, you can _laugh?_ I thought you were physically incapable of that.”

“Die.” Five says it before he can stop himself and Klaus gasps, laughs, shaking Five’s leg again. He’s so damn excited about it, for some ungodly reason, and it makes Five’s face flush with self-consciousness.

Makes him feel like a child, who’s just managed to land a punchline to a joke he’d been trying for weeks.

It’s gross.

It's mundane.

“I knew there was a bit of humor left in that cold dead heart of yours,” Klaus puts a hand to his chest, looking up at the ceiling and gasping dramatically. “No one can really be as much of a stone faced bitch as you were pretending to be.”

“Gee, thanks.” Five scoffs and pushes Klaus with his foot until he’s almost falling off the bed, letting out a string of curses intercut with giggling.

Yeah.

This has to be reality, because nowhere in his own mind would he ever conjure _Klaus._ Let alone _annoying_ Klaus. He wouldn’t subject himself to _that_ horror, crazy or not. So it’s somewhat… comforting, that he’s being such a little shit.

That he’s being _himself._ And, it’s frustrating, Klaus being what inevitably drags him out of his spiral (he should have been able to do it himself) but at the very least he’s out of it, if nothing else.

“Face it,” Klaus says, interrupting his train of thought. “You’re really just a grumpy, kind hearted, _little_ old man in there.” Five twists his mouth up, cocking a brow as he scoffs again.

He pushes a little hard, and finally Klaus goes rolling off the edge of the bed with a startled yelp.

“What was that?” Five asks, craning his neck like he’s trying to hear something far away. “Wh - What? I didn’t catch that.”

“Get stuffed!” Klaus calls back, but it lacks any real threat, and Five doesn’t seem to have the energy to fight the tiny, barely noticeable smile that spreads across his face.


End file.
